


do i know you?

by laurencathryn



Category: Psych
Genre: Amnesia, Angst, Car Accidents, Feels, Fluff, Lots of Angst, M/M, Memory Loss, Shawn Whump, Why are they so cute?, lassie is actually a soft little bean, only when it comes to shawn ofc
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-27 12:25:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16702516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laurencathryn/pseuds/laurencathryn
Summary: "were we friends?" shawn asks me as he sits in the too-white hospital bed.i think for a moment, memoried clouding my head and my eyes, and i smile."yeah shawn, we were."he contemplates this, but then he turns to me with a huge smile on his face."good."





	1. where is he?

**Author's Note:**

> this is only chapter one of many! stay tuned :)

Hospitals were never my cup of tea. 

Waiting for hours for news that you don’t want to hear, getting light headed from the sterile smell of antiseptic in the air, overcome with worry for no reason when you just know that they're okay. 

And being choked with sadness when you just know they’re not. 

Sitting here now, waiting for news of Shawn’s progress, I’m not too sure what to feel. He seemed fine, he was fine, throwing jokes and to-big smiles, throwing everyone in for a loop, at least until... 

Until he wasn’t. 

 

 

It started off as a normal day, Detective O’Hara and myself had been called into a crime scene. 55-year-old white male, signs of a break-in, no struggle. Based on the position of the body, we assumed he hadn’t heard the intruder and had been struck from behind. Now, all we had to do was figure out who it was, and get them behind bars. 

They had just gotten into the apartment that the man was found in when right away he noticed Guster standing in the apartment to the side, shifting uncomfortably from side to side. He was holding two pineapple smoothies in one hand and had his phone in the other, a frustrated expression on his face. 

Lassiter looked around, expecting Spencer to come out from around the corner of the milky white walls, or pop out from the obnoxiously tall fake plant in the middle of the room where they were standing. He braced himself for Spencer’s overextravagant psychic vision that was about to take place but was surprised when the honey-haired man ceased to make an appearance. 

He walked towards Guster, a questioning look on his face, and had asked where Shawn was, trying hard to look annoyed, and not let the increasing worry that he was feeling get ahold of him. 

He’s probably just with his Dad, or taking a break from cases for a while, the little voice in his head told him. 

But, Guster was holding two smoothies, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t for him or Juliet. No, that was meant for Shawn. 

So where the hell was he? 

As he asked the question, he watched as Guster’s face flipped between different emotions. Frustrated, concerned, and exasperated, all at once. 

“He was supposed to be here.” Guster shifted his feet as he said it, and continued, looking guilty.  
“We might have had a small fight on the way over, and I might have left him on the curb at Pysch.” 

“You what?” He had asked with equally as much exasperation as Guster had. 

Now Guster was starting to look anxious under the detective's sharp look and crumbled like a dry pastry.

“I was irritated because he wanted to take a different approach to a case, and I didn’t want to hear his rambling so I just pulled out of the drive when he got out.” He said nervously as he desperately looked in places that weren’t anywhere near Lassiter. 

\--”And I got smoothies because I thought it would make him feel better, but he was supposed to be here 20 minutes ago, and it's like Shawn to be late but not this late and I’m starting to --” 

He was rambling now, Lassiter could tell, so he raised his hand and motioned for him to stop talking. 

“He probably just lost track of time, typical Spencer. He’s fine, Guster.” He tried to sound convincing and prayed that he came across that way because inside everything was screaming at him that something wasn’t right. 

Sure, Spencer was late to crime scenes, and meetings, and court hearings, and -- well about everything-- but he still showed up, eventually. And this was a pretty out of the blue case, something right up Shawn’s alley. But he forced himself to think rationally, and turned away from Guster, gathering evidence from the crime scene in front of him. 

He had just started to forget about the younger man, when both his and Juliet’s phones went off at an alert of a motorcycle crash along the highway, 10 minutes from where they were now. He felt his heart turn to lead as he read the details from the crash. 

A car and a motorcycle were involved, a Norton 750, and a white Ford Focus. Three people were involved in the crash, an older couple in the car, both being treated for minor injuries, and a young man on the motorcycle, who had been flung from the motorcycle upon impact, sending him flying into the road. He was being treated for severe injuries, and they were calling all closest units to secure the scene and get statements. 

As he continued reading down the brief notification he got, all signs pointed to it being Shawn. 

Mid-twenties, light brown hair, casual attire. He also drove a Norton 750 and was quite proud of it. 

Lassiter tried not to let his worry get the best of him as he hopped in his squad car and headed to the scene. 

I mean, there's probably tons of brown haired guys in their twenties that ride Norton 750’s right? 

Right? 

Wrong. 

And he knew it too.

As he pulled into the crime scene and stepped under the bright yellow tape, he was so shocked by what he saw, he physically stopped walking, making Juliet knock into him from behind. 

“Holy shit.” 

Those were the only words he could think of saying that would mildly represent what he was seeing, his mouth gaping at the scene in front of him. He heard Juliet gasp from behind him, but he paid no mind to her. No, he was too focused on the broken stretch of highway that sat in front of him, almost tauntingly. 

The ford focus sat to the right side of the highway, windshield shattered and crashed into the railing of the road. The entire left side of the passenger’s left backseat was completely bent out of shape, the metal completely ruined. Carlton sent a quick thank you to whoever was listening that the older couple was able to get out of the car without anything more than a bloody nose, or a sprained wrist. 

The car was completely totaled from the left side, and it made Carlton wonder what the hell could have caused that much damage on a car like that. And all concentrated on one side, just damn. It made him wonder what the hell Spen--the motorcycle driver, he corrected himself, did to get himself propelled so far to run into a car like that. It almost looked like the motorcycle had hit the left side straight on like it was aiming for it. That was the part that didn’t make sense to him. 

The Norton was a completely different story. There wasn’t an unscathed piece of that bike, pieces of metal and tire and glass everywhere. Where they could tow the Ford Focus, Lassiter wasn’t so sure they wouldn’t have to pick up the pieces of the bike and put it in the back of a truck. There was nothing to put back together again. 

Again, he asked himself, how in the everloving hell did this happen. Motorcycles don’t just randomly run head-on into cars and completely destroy themselves, now do they. 

But the thing that was really making him want to lay on the floor and never get up again, was the puddle of blood in the middle of the road, smearing and running every which way. He almost gagged as a stream of it began to slowly make its way towards him.

He quickly moved away from the puddle and stopped cold when he finally found the one thing he was looking for. 

Shawn. 

He was lying on the ground, bloody and broken, with hoards of paramedics rushing around him, poking and prodding, and working so quickly around him that it was making his eyes swim. 

The tears in his eyes didn’t help either. 

He looked relatively okay for someone who had been thrown twenty feet into ongoing traffic, or atleast he thought as he inched closer to the younger man laying on the bloody paved road. 

That quickly changed, when he reached his destination, right beside Shawn, and kneeled down beside him. 

He was splattered with red from head to toe, in blood that he was pretty sure belonged to only him. After sparing a quick glance to the puddle in the road, he concluded that that blood also belonged to him as well. 

His face was contorted with pain, and he had a large gash going down the side of his face, from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. Blood was smeared across his whole face, making him almost unrecognizable from a distance. His arm was bending in a way that it shouldn't be, and from what he could tell from the younger man's breathing and facial expression, there was a lot more wrong then what meets the eye. He was in pain, and a lot. 

Lassiter's eyes filled with tears as he looked at Shawn, hands hovering awkwardly over his body, which was too still. The stillness was unnerving, to say the least, so unlike Shawn, that he didn't know what to do. 

He wanted more than anything to just see his brown eyes open, for him to laugh and get up, and walk it off as nothing happened. He wanted to hear Lassie-face one last time coming from the psychic's lips, to hide a smile underneath a frown as he tried to act offended at Spencer's antics. 

He just wanted to know that he was okay. To be able to tell him that he respected him and he liked worthing with him and hell, that his career would be ruined without him. His life. 

His tears began to blur his vision when he felt a hand at his shoulder and saw Juliet fall to her knees beside him, hands to her mouth, tears smearing across her face. 

"Shawn..?' 

It didn't come out as a question, her voice breaking halfway through his name, clogged with tears. 

Lassiter imagined he would sound the same way if he were asked to talk right now. He grabbed Juliet's hand and squeezed, trying to offer as much comfort as he could. 

He didn't let go as the paramedics pushed them aside. or when they whisked him away in an ambulance, or when Juliet collapsed into him, shaking. 

What a sight to see. 

The two most respected detectives of the SBPD huddled together, clothes rumpled, eyes red, crying in a puddle of their colleague's blood. 

What a sight to see indeed.


	2. I could promise him that

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always make Lassie a little fluff ball in all my fics. I just love him so much. Anyways, Lassie's pov. First person, because why not?
> 
> Question, just because I'm curious, who's your favorite psych character and why?

Once the chaos subsided, and O’Hara and I were left alone on the road, no more paramedics or firetrucks to be seen, it was time to get the statements from the couple that had been involved on the other end of the crash. 

Since their car had been completely totaled, O’Hara and I were in charge of returning them safely to their home, but after, we were dismissed by the Chief for the rest of the day. I was going to spend mine in a bright white room in an uncomfortable chair. 

As I make my way towards the couple, O’Hara trails behind me, obviously distracted by her thoughts of Shawn, tears still trailing down her cheeks, hair disheveled. 

I probably didn’t look any better. 

I call her over, ignoring how lost she looks, and tell her to leave. Go to the hospital, I tell her.

Keep an eye on him for me. 

She looks at me with expressions of many different ranges flitting across her face, half of her wanting to stay with me, why, I don’t know. The other wanting to run as fast as she can to her car. 

The urge to go wins her over. 

I can understand. Someone has to stay and get the statements, and I made the decision to have it be me. Partly because I can’t bear to see O’Hara in pain, she’s like a little sister in my eyes, and the urge to protect her outweighs anything. But if I have to be honest with myself, its because I couldn't go to sleep tonight not knowing what the hell happened. 

So I go and find out. 

I make my way over to the couple and am immediately hit by the intimacy of the position that they are in. They stand, facing each other, with their hands together and foreheads resting gently against the others. They are staring in each other's eyes, safe, away from the car, the accident, the blood. 

I wonder if I’ll ever get to do that with someone someday. Someone I love. Hopefully, it's not because of the same circumstances, but just because I can. I think that would make it even more meaningful. 

As I reach them, they slowly pull apart from one another and look at me with sorrowful eyes. 

“I know this must be hard for you, but I really need to figure out what happened,” I say with as much gentleness as I can conjure up in my voice, steel from years of interrogating perps in which I hold no sympathy. 

They look at each other, guilty from what I can tell. That’s never a good thing. 

At first, it looks like the woman is about to start crying, her eyes becoming shiny, and her chin starting to shake slightly, but she grabs her husband’s hand and seems to calm down. He’s like her own little rock to the real world. 

I’m about to tell her it’s okay if she’s not ready and that I won’t force her, but she surprises me. There’s been a lot of surprises today. 

She takes one last look at her husband, before letting go of his hand and turning to their car where it lies broken on the side of the road. She runs her hand along the most damaged part and stops in the middle of a particularly large dent. I realize with a start where that must have been where Shawn made impact. 

She begins to talk, not looking at me, but only at the shattered windshield of the white car. “We were driving along the highway, coming home from a hike.” She stops, gesturing to her herself and her husband, who are both sporting hiking gear on their persons. 

“We were talking one moment, when I noticed a dog walking alone alongside the road, looking tired and hungry. I motioned for my husband to take a look and ended up getting distracted. When I looked away, I realized that I had just missed the exit that I had to take to get home, so I tried to pull a sharp turn.” 

Her eyes are filled with tears by this point, many spilling over. She takes her hand off the dented car and makes her way over to a piece of Shawn’s bike that lay discarded on the road. It was the cracked remains of his side mirror. I watch with slight confusion as she picks it up gently before she begins to talk again. This time it is quiet and filled with pain. 

“I should’ve looked behind me’”, she says, her voice cracking roughly in the middle. “He was just trying to take the exit and I swerved right in front of him. He didn't even see me until he crashed straight into the door.” 

“The impact surprised the hell outta me, and I swerved away from him, hitting the border of the highway. He hit the car head-on from the side, and I swear it was like slow motion.” Her voice is impossible soft by this point, and I have to strain to hear her. 

“He hit the passenger door, and his bike ricocheted off the metal, I didn't even know that was possible until I looked around and saw his bike on the ground, twenty feet away.” 

She stops talking for a moment, and I see rage overcome her eyes. It surprises me, and I even take a step back. “How is it fair that I am the one to blame, and yet I didn’t get anything more than a bruise on my arm?” 

She starts pacing now, her voice getting quieter as she continues, which unnerves me. 

“Why does have to pay for my recklessness?” She closes her eyes, her hand once again finding her husbands, before looking me straight in the eyes. 

My tear-filled, anguished, red as hell eyes. 

“He’s just a kid. You make sure he’s alright. Make sure he stays that way.” 

I nod, not knowing what else to say. I feel anguish in every fiber of my being, and I don’t know if I want to cry and scream until I’m bleeding, or if I want to just lock myself in my room and stare at a wall for months on end. 

But, I do know one thing. I have to get these people home, and I have to get my sorry ass to the hospital where I can cry and mope and scream and pray just like everyone else. 

I have to be there when I get the news that he’s awake, or that he’ll never be awake again. 

I have to. 

So I do. 

The ride to the hospital is quiet, and I can hear myself thinking all the things I’m too scared to have become a reality. So I turn on the radio as high as it will go, and I drown it all out. 

When I get there, the waiting room is crowded with people, and I quickly locate the people that I’m looking for. They're the ones who look the worst. Not that I look any better. 

Henry is sitting in the corner, head in his hands, talking to someone quietly on the phone. I have no doubts that its Maggie, who’s probably scared out of her mind not being able to be there. Last I heard, she was in New York. 

I head over to him, and it strikes me immediately how tense he is. I put a hand on his shoulders, and I squeeze. “He’ll be okay Henry,” I say with as much confidence as I can muster. “He’s strong, and he’s too stubborn to go out like this.” He looks questionably at me when I say this, but I just shrug. 

“He’s stubborn as hell Henry, you have to admit it. If he were to go out, it’d be a a blaze of pineapple shaped fireworks or diving out of a airplane into a volcano or some crazy shit like that.” 

He smiles at this, and the weight in my chest lightens just a little bit. 

“He’ll get through this, he’s too damn important not too.” 

And with that, I walk away, and I notice another member of those here for Shawn. 

Guster sits on the far right, away from everything, holding a pen in his hands. I recognize the pen immediately, Shawn puts one on my desk nearly every week. He has this thing where instead of writing fortune cookies like a normal person, he would get stupid sayings printed on a pen in bulk every week. 

The one in Guster’s hand now is one a recognize from a couple weeks ago and has a stupid knock-knock joke on the front of it, a distracting yellow color. I reach into my pocket, praying its still there, and almost smile when it is. 

The pen from this week slipped into my coat pocket yesterday by Shawn himself. It’s a simple blue color and has a simple phrase written in block letters. 

“Live today like tomorrow there will be no more pineapples.” 

The saying is so genuinely Shawn, that it makes my heart ache just to read it. 

I twirl the pen in my hands and walk over to where the man is seated. He looks up as I pass, and I take my chance. I hold out the pen in my hand, and motion for him to take it. “It’s this week’s edition, I figured you might like it better.” 

He takes it from my hand, new tears forming in his eyes as he reads the short phrase. He laughs, ragged and broken, and thanks me, before holding it close to his chest. I nod and resume my way along the line of chairs. 

The last person there is Juliet, and she stares blankly at the floor, tears still running down her face. She doesn’t move as I approach her, and she looks almost as if someone had frozen time, she’s so still. 

I look at her face for a few more seconds, looking so lost and broken, that all I want to do is make her smile again, even just for a couple of seconds. 

Almost as if God was listening to my little internal prayer, I smile softly as the song changes in the overhead of the waiting room, filling the room with soft strumming of a guitar, and a faraway voice. 

I tap on her arm softly and wait until she turns to me before beginning to speak. 

“Do you remember the night after the Yang case, and you stayed at the station because you didn’t feel like going home?” 

Her face scrunches up at the painful memory, but she nods. 

“Remember when almost everyone in the station volunteered to stay with you, and we had a huge station sleepover, in the lobby?” 

This gets her attention, and her face brightens just a little for a moment. 

She lets out a little laugh and speaks, “Yeah, we had to drag mattresses up from the prisoner cells because of Dobson’s bad back.” she says with a slight smile on her lips.

“Well, do you remember when Spencer took out that stole a guitar from evidence, and got yelled at by Chief for touching it, claiming he could make us all fall asleep with only one song?” 

She laughs, harder this time, and nods. “He came out and sang that song, and it was one of the safest I’ve felt in my life,” she says with a soft look on her face. “After everything, I was so scared, and he made it all go away for a couple of minutes.” 

I smile at that because despite all his childishness, he has a way of making everyone and anyone feel safe and welcome. It was one of the biggest things I loved about him. 

Juliet is looking at me expectantly, and I silently point to the speaker on the wall. Her eyes follow my hand, and it takes her a second before she realizes what I mean. 

Her hands go to her lips and she looks at me, her eyes shining with so much relief that it makes my eyes water. 

I excuse myself, and I go up to the counter, give the nurse a five and she presses the repeat button on that song for the whole entire night. Juliet even manages to drift off in the night, the day’s exhaustion finally taking it out on her. 

She falls asleep to the same song she did all those years ago, in a crowded police station, with Spencer's voice gently filling up the room. 

Why am I doing this you must be asking? 

Because if the roles were reversed and it was Shawn waiting in this room, which I know without a doubt he would be, it would be him that would be making everyone laugh and smile when they should be crying. It would be him that would take it upon himself to make sure everyone was okay, disregarding his own feelings. 

It’s just who he was. 

Even if I couldn’t make the pain go away, I could make it a bit more bearable, for a few more seconds. 

I couldn’t promise that Shawn would be okay, but I could promise that while he gets on the path to being there, that there wouldn’t be as much pain and worry in the people that he loved. 

I could promise that to him. 

So hell, I did. I stayed there and made it my goal to make everyone in that room laugh at least once, even people that I didn’t know. People in here waiting for potentially the worst news of their lives, they could deserve a little break from the stress. 

So you can bet your ass I gave it to them.


End file.
